Ladies and Gentlemen, The Lamest Campaign Idea of 2007

I know I should take this in the spirit of Halloween, and chuckle with mirth upon hearing the wacky fun proposed by those crazy kids on the Dodd campaign, but... I just can't. And instead, I'm looking for some way to un-read the epic-level lameness they have offered (hat tip, Influence Peddler).

Chris Dodd did lay out step-by-step instructions today for kids to dress up like him in hopes of bagging lots of candy:

• Use coloring to turn your white (representing the Democratic presidential candidate's 26 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee).
• Carry a copy of the Constitution (demonstrating Dodd's vow to restore what he calls the Bush administrations assaults on civil liberties).
• Wield a folder of Dodd's campaign proposals (showing his "bold ideas" for a corporate carbon tax, free community college, and a comprehensive national service plan)

"Every year, parents and their children struggle to find that perfect Halloween costume," Dodd spokesman Bryan DeAngelis said in a statement. "We wanted to do our part to help by providing them with the option of going as the one candidate who has the proven leadership, record of results, and bold ideas that we need in our next president — Chris Dodd."

Somehow I suspect trick-or-treating in this costume would go something like this:

Suburban Resident Answering Door: Who are you supposed to be?

Child: I'm Senator Chris Dodd!

(long pause)

Suburban Eesident Answering Door: Who?

Child: Look, this is my white hair, representing my 26 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee! And this is my copy of the Constitution, demonstrating my vow to restore what I call the Bush administrations assaults on civil liberties! And this is my folder of my campaign proposals, showing my "bold ideas" for a corporate carbon tax, free community college, and a comprehensive national service plan!

(long pause)

Suburban Resident Answering Door: I'm calling Child Protective Services.

I wonder if Giuliani will start quoting this, instead of constantly just saying that George Will said something about his conservative governance:

Giuliani has echoed the language of economic libertarianism with more
frankness, and less pretense of compassion, than any recent Republican
presidential candidate

it is intended as an insult, but hey.

Rebbe Reichman

I remember watching the 2001 World Series (against the Diamondbacks) in Morg Lounge. Amongst all the students sat Rabbi Heshy Reichman on the edge of his seat. When Tino Martinez hit his home run with 2 outs in the ninth to tie up game 4, Rabbi Reichman got everyone there to start dancing around in a circle, singing "ki va moed". When the exact thing happened the next night (game 5-Scott Brosius tying the game in the ninth), there was more dancing. Only the incredible-ness of the event made the dancing that much more leibadik.

interesting machloket at tnr:

"I don't quite understand Ross Douthat's take on Hillary Clinton and the Democratic field. He writes:

As I've probably said before, Hillary may not be the best choice for the Democrats, but she's definitely the safest; I think nominating her more or less guarantees the party 48 percent of the vote, since she's sufficiently tested and savvy and all the rest of it to make a Dukakis or Dole-style wipeout almost completely unimaginable. And in a year when things will (probably) be going the Democrats' way anyway, there's a lot to be said for nominating a known quantity and assuming that, in spite of what Jonah rightly calls the "irreducible core" of anti-Hillary sentiment, the political landscape alone will ensure that her guaranteed 48 percent rises to 51-53 percent by November '08. Whereas Obama and to a lesser extent Edwards both have a higher ceiling, but also a much lower floor, since neither has been through the fire already the way Hillary has (indeed, Obama has never run against significant GOP opposition of any kind), and either one could flame out disastrously in the heat of a general-election campaign.

Remember, John Kerry received 48% of the vote; it's extremely unlikely any Democrat is going to do worse than that next year. Moreover, it seems to me like you could just as easily make the opposite case: Hillary's "ceiling" is just what is so worrying about her. Because the senator is so polarizing, it's likely that some of the numerous advantages the Dems have in 2008 will be subsumed by personal animosity. Why not choose someone like Obama or Edwards, who both have greater upside potential, and are assured of being competitive because of the climate?

--Isaac Chotiner

(immanent eschaton is inclined towards the first approach, וצ"ע)

suggest your own caption

in case you were wondering what has become of the Rush Limbaugh scandal, click here.
UPDATE to previous post: it seems ann coulter's comments were taken out of context too. link

the reason ann coulter's comments were ever noteworthy

"What we seem to have forgotten is how unique the circumstances were that made possible the establishment of the American compact on religion and politics. Perhaps now is the time to restore the much needed concept of American exceptionalism and remind ourselves of some basic facts. The most important one that set our experience apart from that of Europe was the absence of a strong Roman Catholic Church as a redoubt of intellectual and political opposition to the liberal-democratic ideas hatched by the Enlightenment – and thus also, the absence of a radical, atheist Enlightenment convinced that l’infâme must be écrasé. For over two centuries France, Italy, and Spain were rent by what can only be called existential struggles over the legitimacy of Catholic political theology and the revolutionary heritage of 1789. (Though the term “liberalism” is of Spanish coinage, as a political force it was weak in the whole of Catholic Europe until after the Second World War.) Neither side in this epic struggle was remotely interested in “toleration”; they wanted victory.
"Looking beyond Europe, we note other things missing from the American landscape, quite literally. For example, there were no religious shrines to fight over, no holy cities, no temples, no sacred burial grounds (except those of the Native Americans, which were shamefully ignored). There also was a complete absence of what we would today call diversity: America was racially and culturally homogeneous in the early years of the republic, even if there were differences – in retrospect, incredibly minor – in Protestant affiliation. Yes, there were a few Catholics and Jews among the early immigrants, but the tone was set by Protestants of dissenting tendencies from the British Isles. The theological differences among them were swamped by the fact that everyone spoke the same language, cooked the same food, and looked to a shared history of persecution and emigration. It was a homogeneous country, and what comes with homogeneity, along with some troubling things, is trust...

"Except for Joseph Smith in his last days and a few other colorful exceptions, no serious American religious thinker ever developed a full-blown theology of government throwing the basic legitimacy of American democracy into question. It is something of a miracle. But whatever its source, it is exceptional and we need to recognize its consequences. Though the long tradition of Christian political theology eventually died in twentieth-century Europe, memory of it is still strong and laced with fear. But the American founding took place as a self-conscious break with Europe’s traditional political theologies and so memory of the world we left behind is somewhat vague. We were born, so to speak, on the other shore.
So successful has our passage been to this other shore that it is sometimes difficult to remind Americans that political theology is the primordial form of political thought. Virtually every civilization known to us began with an image of itself as set within a divine nexus of God, man, and world, and based its understanding of legitimate authority on that theological picture. This is true of all the civilizations of the ancient Near East, and of many in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Political theology seems to be the default condition of civilizations as they try to articulate how their political order relates to the natural order, and how both stand under a divine order. It is a rational construct with its own concepts and terms, and a long history of intellectual debates that are still alive for those who believe. In it, arguments about authority and legitimacy, or rights and duties, travel up and down a ladder connecting human reasons to divine ones. Making those connections and developing a comprehensive account of God, man, and world simply is what it is to think politically for political theologians.